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UTILITY WEEK | NOVEMBER 2021 | 33 as customer pro les and energy needs change. "This is going to make the customer environment much more complex," she said, adding that the industry faced an additional challenge of working across networks and with new partners. Sandys also agged the need for greater digital liter- acy and ability to learn from other sectors. "We do lack digital skills and we do need greater experience of part- nership with digital natives," she explained. "Embrace the fact the journey has started, we're all in this together, and that digitisation will be a crucial component of our energy system as we move towards net zero and delight customers in a decarbonised way." The role of local actors and authorities Assembled experts were also unanimous that local actors and authorities would be a rm xture in future innovation and the growth to 100 million network actors, as outlined by Sandys. They agreed that the role of local authorities would stretch from providing accurate data and information to networks and managing the local implications of decisions being taken on a nationwide level, to helping model diƒ erent options within areas and fundamentally playing the role of the "honest broker", according to the National Grid's Whyte. Eliane Algaard, operations director at SSE, added that working with local authorities to map out regional net- work plans had helped her rm identify opportunities to roll out low-carbon technology, for example, and oƒ ered a means of breaking out of siloed mindsets. Quality of analytics and data usage Discussing data interoperability and the net-zero tran- sition of assets, Eric Brown, chief technology oˆ cer at Energy Systems Catapult, explained that interactions between assets are going to be as important as the assets themselves in years to come. With this, he explained that intelligent data usage and ow had the potential to create better informed decisions and innovation in broad subject areas such as investment and carbon footprint. He stressed that the right data in creative hands can do "a lot of good and achieve an awful lot". John Harvey, senior consultant at soŒ ware company Copperleaf, also made this point, emphasising the power of decision analytics in building infrastructure t for the future, create optimum investment programmes and ulti- mately build roadmaps to net zero. Utility Week Live 2022 See this content brought to life at Utility Week Live, 17-18 May 2022, NEC Birmingham New approaches to asset management and maintenance and delivering smart water networks are among the frontline challenges at the heart of Utility Week Live 2022's live content programme. View the challenges and be alerted for tickets to the industry's most eagerly awaited reunion at utilityweeklive. co.uk. Longer term climate challenges To round oƒ the conference, the University of Birming- ham's Dr Emma Ferranti, senior lecturer in engineering, and postgraduate researcher Daniel Donaldson, outlined a framework for climate adaptation in the electricity dis- tribution network. Detailing their own work with Electricity North West, the pair also explained how asset owners and operators can be more resilient to climate changes and identify vul- nerability and risk to assets. They explained that distribution network operators need to incorporate more stringent climate resilience and change into their long-term planning due to the chang- ing impact of weather events such as ooding, increased temperature, lightening and high winds on assets. Climate adaption has to become "business as usual", they said, with long-term thinking important in prepar- ing assets for climate change amid adaptation shortfall for lightening, storms and high winds. Stuart Stone, UW Innovate editor The Network Asset Performance Conference 2021 was Utility Week's fi rst hybrid event, mixing virtual and physical components Main conference sponsor

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